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For much of his life Dalton was an ardent meteorologist. He compiled a record of more than 200,000 atmospheric observations in his notebooks and these observations led Dalton to study gases. His experimentation with gases then led to the formulation of his atomic theory. In 1803 he applied this concept to a table of atomic weights and in 1805 he wrote a paper on the absorption of gases, which in turn led to the development of his famous law of partial pressures, known also as Dalton's law. Dalton was also the first to provide a scientific description of color blindness, a condition from which he suffered, and which was long called "Daltonism." In 1822 he became a member of the Royal Society and in 1825 received its medal for his work on the atomic theory. John Dalton
died on July 27, 1844. His name lives on in Manchester where three
streets in the Greater Manchester area were named after him.
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Born
in 1766, John Dalton was a teacher, chemist, and physicist.
From 1793 he taught mathematics and physical sciences at New College,
Manchester.